Audience QuestionsHour 2

Pamela currently has a 35 year old 27" CRT TV, and is looking to buy a new HD TV. She's debating between the LG and Samsung. Leo says they both will be excellent. One thing that's important to consider is TV size. She should Google "HDTV Size Calculator" and figure out how big of a TV she should get based on how far away she will be viewing it.

Bruce got a virus on his computer that's preventing him from gaining full access to his computer, and is asking him to pay $300 to get it back. Leo says to try starting in safe mode. If he has access to another computer, Kaspersky offers a rescue disk that he can download and make a CD that he can boot to on his computer. Once he gets access to his data, he should wipe the drive and reinstall Windows from a known, good source.

Alan has a Windows 7 64 bit home built computer, and has an M-Audio Delta 1010 audio card. Every time he shuts down Windows, he has to hold down the power button to shut it off. He's figured out there are two services preventing it from shutting down: audiosrv and audioendpointbuilder.

First, he should check M-Audio's support site to see if they have any fix. He has checked into gpedit.msc, a Microsoft plugin that will allow him to configure the computer more. He plans to use that to insert a batch file that will shut down those services upon shut down. Leo thinks that's a good idea and should solve his problem.

Audience QuestionsHour 3

Mach needs to be able to get metadata from MP3s and put them into a spreadsheet. Leo says he'll have to write a program to do this, and there are many different programming languages that could accomplish this. VisualBasic, Pearl, Python, Ruby, Microsoft Powershell, PHP, Java. He'd use a library to open each song's MP3 tags, put it into a database and go to the next one. It's fairly simple to do. Kingy from the chatroom suggests checking out taglib.github.com.

Larry's Yahoo account was compromised and he couldn't get into it, so he contacted a company he thought was Yahoo. They asked him for money to fix it, but he still can't get into his account. Now they want more money. Leo says this is a hacker, and this is a scam.

Leo says that all the Blu-ray players nowadays are pretty much the same. It's important to get one that can connect to Wi-Fi though because they do sometimes need updates. Other than that, it should be fine.

This Week in Tech News

T-Mobile has announced that it is launching its own Android phone called the REVVL, made by Alcatel. The phone will have a fingerprint sensor and cost $125. Leo says that security patches must be done regularly or saving money on a house phone simply isn't going to be beneficial.

Consumer Reports has been seeing poor long term reliability in the data they are collecting from readers on Microsoft's Surface line of products. It's so bad that they've downgraded their recommendation to "Do Not Buy." Leo says that long term reliability is something that Consumer Reports goes to great expense to analyze and that they're probably on the money with their decision.

Wired Magazine is reporting that hackers have managed to encode a computer virus into DNA, which can then infect any computerized instrument that is used to analyze the strand. If hackers are now creating malware in our DNA, how can it be fought? Fortunately, though, it's not a very practical or widespread application. Yet.

This week, the US Army issued a directive ordering soldiers to not use DJI drones and other UAVs due to cyber vulnerabilities and the potential for spying by the devices on the battlefield. DJI is shocked by the move without consultation. What would be the threat? Leo says that drones have radios and GPS, and often have internet connectivity. So it's possible that drones could be taken over by a third party and used for spying, especially for mapping terrain. But Leo says it's also likely there's could be a certain amount of paranoia at work here. The Army may know something we don't though because of the risk associated with battlefield operations. But could DJI drones spy on us? Leo doesn't think so. Your mobile devices and "internet of things" can be more of a threat.